You fetch what is not glamorous: straw mats from the lodge eaves, a board like a hat, a bit of oiled cloth Peverel swears is accounted for.

The wet joint on the flyer gets a roof of its own. Mortar can set if you stop the sky from stirring it. This is not cowardice. This is chemistry with patience.

Ned, passing with a coil of rope, grunts the way he does when he agrees and will not give the sky the satisfaction of a cheer.

Rain starts, polite, then less polite. The River Wold beyond the cloister wall picks up its old argument with the banks. The Holbeck road will be mud. The keystone will travel like a stubborn thought.

Inside, the centering waits: oak ribs the shape of the vault, a temporary heaven.

Maud will want bodies in out of the worst of it, or bodies doing the next right small thing.

Covering is building. Anyone who thinks only the chisel counts has not met rain. You tie the board-hat so the wind cannot steal it. The joint goes from glossy-wrong to merely damp. Setting can happen in the secret under the hat. Peverel will write the oilcloth down. Let him. Paper is part of stone.